The head of Ubuntu says his company isn’t interested in forming a deal with Microsoft along the lines of those recently reached by Linspire, Xandros, and Novell.

I’ve always said that for Linux to have a chance on the desktop it must be turned into Windows. I know how that might sound to most, but that statement is completely true for one reason: people like what they know, familiarity is comfortable.

So what reason is there to switch away from Windows, something known and used, to Linux, a complete unknown?… Because it’s free and Microsoft is an evil monopoly!?… I think we have to do better than that. We have to give the people what they “want”, and not what we think they “need”, all while making the transition completely seamless.

The average desktop user just wants to power on, browse the internet, visit a few social sites, send email, do some IM, watch videos, and nothing more. And this task needs to function and look exactly like it does on Windows.

Yes, I know you can track down Codecs and TrueType fonts, and install them, but this is beyond what 95% of the desktop market is willing to do. It has to be already provided and look exactly like it does on Windows. If this task takes a single click, it’s already one click too many.

Every year since 2000 it was the year Linux was going to displace Windows. And every year it has failed miserably on the desktop. Linux is by the developer, for the developer. It works best server-side. The desktop/UI is horrible and always makes you do things differently, for no reason at all but “to be different.” And its type of “difference” is not the cool type, it’s downright scary.

Why learn from Microsoft’s mistakes and success, taking what works, when you can spend time and effort re-inventing the wheel. And until this gets fixed, Linux will alway turn away the desktop market.

Another huge problem I see is with providing the user with too many choices… You give someone multiple distributions, all with their own ways of doing things, with multiple applications that have the same function, with too many different options and ways of performing tasks, and the user becomes confused and disoriented. He begins to distrust the product. Time is waisted.

The majority of the desktop user-base want their hand held and told that everything is okay. And Linux slaps them right across the face. Very little is standardized or uniform. This type of “choice”, in this context, is not a strength, but rather a weakness.

While this move *is* the smartest move ever, it never the less is too little and too late — or to put it more correctly: completely and utterly pointless. Why you might ask? Because it’s not free, you pay $60 for Linspire. I can get Windows cheaper than that, even for free, and have no problems doing more with it as a Desktop.

With Dell, in some cases its only $10 more for a Vista Home system over Ubuntu Linux. In other cases, Microsoft will give you most of their s/w for free if you show up to one of the conferences. And its not like most PCs do not already ship with it.

But remember that Linspire is built on Ubuntu. No Ubuntu, no Linspire at this point!

I’ll have to take a look at why they switched off from Debian.

Linspire is defiantly on point with the Windows look, but I just don’t see people spending more than $0 on it — at least not until most of the top desktop apps that run on Windows, run on Linux.

Yes, I know you can track down Codecs and TrueType fonts, and install them, but this is beyond what 95% of the desktop market is willing to do.

Isn’t that what you have to do with windows too? Either install an app like gom or track down a codec pack or go mental trying to find a windows H264 codec. Then you have to go get a flash player and adobe and a better java. come on. That comment applies to all OS. As for dvd playing, xp doesn’t have it but some linux distros will play out of the box.
I no longer use windows but luckily enough I have all these on cd for the windows acquaintances that couldn’t track them down.
Now in a good desktop linux distro you go to synaptic and in a few minutes the app or codec is there. No hunting, no fake downloads or adware apps or whatever.
Just a little thought

Just out of curiosity: why should I use Linux when it is just a copy of Windows? There is no reason to use Linux or any other OS when it is just a copy.
And as a help desk: if someone is fine with his/her Windows why should I replace the Windows the person has with a Windows-like replacement?

About the choices: yes, choices is bad – that’s the reason why people always ask for a single standard-fits-them-all car. I never heard anyone saying that it is good to have a choice there!
To be honest: the people are frightened of choice around operating systems because they are not used to it. That’s all. They have choice everywhere else, its called free market. And to think about choices and inform yourself and have disadvantages and advantages is normal in every other market segment. Its just that Microsoft placed a monopoly like it was never before somewhere else.
Don’t mix up reasons and results.

You (author of this blog ) said “I’ve always said that for Linux to have a chance on the desktop it must be turned into Windows.”

So I’m asking you what’s the point of relasing any other operating system if you have to make it a copy of Windows? What’s the point? Where is innovation? Where are new ideas? IMHO GNU/Linux is not and should not be a free copy of Windows, GNU/Linux should be GNU/Linux. It sounds trivial but is good enough for me. Who says GNU/Linux should have, lets say 50% market share on desktops? Apple has far more advertisement, is far more “popular” and has similar market share to GNU/Linux…

Let be GNU/Linux what it is now, let GNU/Linux make slow progress, someone say “This or that year will be the year of Linux on destops” but who really cares about it? GNU/Linux is not another company. It is The Idea. Maybe in the future, in about 5 years, who knows, some distro will be popular and gain 10% market share but then there will be still distros like Gentoo or Slackware. And this is great! And this is what makes GNU/Linux so good. Who needs to be in mainstream? I don’t.

If a distro spends its time making it look and act like windows, then its not linux. Also, there would be NO reason for a windows user to have go through the touble of re-installing with the new OS or buying a new pc: Why would they waste their time/money for something that does the exact same thing.

the smartest linux move ever was Ubuntu getting dell to offer ubuntu . even if not that many people buy the pc’s, it still gets the Ubuntu / Linux name out there, and people are getting more comfortable with it. In my school. im starting to see ‘Ubuntu ‘ stickers on lockers and dorrs. i herer peole talking about it and loving it. even older teachers.

linspire’s deal is pointless. bareley anyone uses linspire compared to ubuntu/suse/fedora/PClinuxOS. It is not respected in the linux community. No users left their distro’s to use linspire once that deal happened. In fact many of their users/developers jumped ship.

Just out of curiosity: why should I use Linux when it is just a copy of Windows? There is no reason to use Linux or any other OS when it is just a copy.

I agree, in this scenario there will be no reason to use Linux over Windows, aside from any price difference… Another point in the conclusion that Linux is best used server-side.

To be honest: the people are frightened of choice around operating systems because they are not used to it. That’s all. They have choice everywhere else, its called free market. And to think about choices and inform yourself and have disadvantages and advantages is normal in every other market segment.

The difference between Linux and Windows is not intuitive… If someone is used to Windows, they will have problems with Linux.

As far as choices go, if you really want to get into it, you can do so philosophically…

Choices do not exist, just the ego. And in a modern society, it’s all the same brand of snake-oil packaged differently.

Its just that Microsoft placed a monopoly like it was never before somewhere else.

Money, greed, and corruption have existed since the beginning of time. It is part of human nature. Nothing new here to see. You cannot defeat it, the best you can do is observe it.

Its rather bold of you to say ” If someone is used to Windows, they will have problems with Linux.”

this is a person by person case, and you cant just generalize every person in the world. I have given PC:inuxOS to 3 different people: My 18 yr old gamer friend, who never heard of linux before. My 70 yr old grandmother, who is not technological at all, and a 45 yr old female website developer who never used linux before. They all loved it and had no problems with it at all. They all switched to PCLinuxOS 2007 as their only OS, and do everything they did on windows, with better PC performance because of the lack of security software running in the background.

Yes, I know you can track down Codecs and TrueType fonts, and install them, but this is beyond what 95% of the desktop market is willing to do. It has to be already provided and look exactly like it does on Windows. If this task takes a single click, it’s already one click too many.

I think that this is simply flawed logic because the slight amount of time needed to get these things installed is payed back in the long run by not worrying about viruses, slowdowns, crashes, ect. Once everything is setup then Linux is better for the average user because they are protected from themself.

I think that this is simply flawed logic because the slight amount of time needed to get these things installed is payed back in the long run by not worrying about viruses, slowdowns, crashes, ect. Once everything is setup then Linux is better for the average user because they are protected from themself.

Slight amount of time? I suppose that is true for the basics.

The only reason there are no viruses for Linux is because for every 1 Linux system there are 50+ Windows systems. You can almost be guaranteed that if the market share was reversed, Linux would be like Win95/98 or worse. There is no secret formula that Linux has and Windows does not or cannot.

Also, Windows 2000/XP has been completely stable for the most part. I’m not sure what crashes you are talking about. Most of the problems were with 95/98.

Another point: I have never run any type of anti-vir s/w on Windows… And I have been just fine. You do have to keep things patched, but the same would hold true for Linux. Users doing stupid things are to blame here.

Close the ports and/or services not used/needed and you are fine. Same goes for Linux… As a matter of fact, every new major distro/release seems to have more and more services and processes up by default.

The only reason there are no viruses for Linux is because for every 1 Linux system there are 50+ Windows systems. You can almost be guaranteed that if the market share was reversed, Linux would be like Win95/98 or worse. There is no secret formula that Linux has and Windows does not or cannot.

Do you have any prove for this? You better should have: Google is easily target number one on the Internet – and it is running on Linux. The same is true for multiple other companies running computer on the Internet. But albeit there is so much presence of Linux there are still no worms.
Even the other way around you have only reasons against your statement: Apache, the Open Source Web server, has a market share far above 50%. But all Web server worms which made it into evening news were always for IIS, not for Apache.

Most interesting in this regard: there was never ever a study able to prove that Linux would get also as many viruses as Windows hast at the moment. Not at all. Instead, most of the worms which were spread in the Windows world used wholes and techniques which would never work in the Linux world because it the design would not allow it. Think of user rights, default-closed ports and program-rights here.

As far as choices go, if you really want to get into it, you can do so philosophically…
Choices do not exist, just the ego. And in a modern society, it’s all the same brand of snake-oil packaged differently.
This is by no means an answer to my raised point that choice is normal in every market segment today. I guess you have no argument here?

Money, greed, and corruption have existed since the beginning of time. It is part of human nature. Nothing new here to see. You cannot defeat it, the best you can do is observe it.

Again, this does not respond to the point I made: I did not state that corruption and greed didn’t exist before, but I did state that Microsoft reached a new level in that area. And you have again no arguments to answer that? Interesting.

Do you have any prove for this? You better should have: Google is easily target number one on the Internet – and it is running on Linux. The same is true for multiple other companies running computer on the Internet. But albeit there is so much presence of Linux there are still no worms.

No one is going to target a market share of 5% when they can get the other 95%. Also, what you are referring to are attempts that target specific companies/networks. I’m talking about the general desktop market.

Further, I don’t think Google just went and installed Ubuntu for themselfs. Whatever they use, for whatever purpose, is custom and configured with something above the default install by *very smart people*.

Even the other way around you have only reasons against your statement: Apache, the Open Source Web server, has a market share far above 50%. But all Web server worms which made it into evening news were always for IIS, not for Apache.

Instead, most of the worms which were spread in the Windows world used wholes and techniques which would never work in the Linux world because it the design would not allow it. Think of user rights, default-closed ports and program-rights here.

No one is going to argue that Windows has not had its share of problems… But the fact is it has been deployed 100s of millions of times, if not more. Do the same for Linux, and you will open up all kinds of exploits.

Again, most of this is very specific in nature, so yes, it would not work on Linux. But that does not translate to that Linux complied code [and to a lesser extent, the design] is somehow invulnerable to all types of attacks and exploits.

This is by no means an answer to my raised point that choice is normal in every market segment today. I guess you have no argument here?

It is normal… I was just saying at the end of the day, it’s all an illusion…

Having worked with both Linux and Windows, I can tell you that as soon as I “observed” my “ego,” I saw the two as “tools” to use. Why get attached to an OS? That’s ridiculus unless your an “idealist.” And while some are true to that point, most are just fan-boys that do not have a single clue. I’ll pay for Windows as long as it allows me to be productive in whatever task I perform.

To myself, Windows is better for the desktop, and Linux for the server.

Again, this does not respond to the point I made: I did not state that corruption and greed didn’t exist before, but I did state that Microsoft reached a new level in that area. And you have again no arguments to answer that? Interesting.

My point was that this is something that happens every day and just about everyone is corrupt or corruptible.

Put the dollar sign into the Linux equation and you will see the same thing.

Microsoft is bad, but IBM is good because they works with Linux [to make money off of it]?

Your article really doesn’t even address the title you wrote. For starters Linux isn’t like windows, but it can do what windows does. Also you don’t point out any reason why Ubuntu will fail.

If anything Ubuntu is the driving force moving users to Linux and companies such as Dell and now Epson selling computers with the OS on them. Vista is a total flop and you have tons of people migrating away from Microsoft to Linux or Mac.

You make vast generalizations that don’t really apply. For example saying that diversity is a bad thing. Having choice offers users the ability to customize to their way of working. If you are beginning with Linux then Ubuntu is the way to go. Simple easy to install. With lots of support on their forums. If you are a programmer, graphic designer, or musician then you may like a different version of Linux which is more focused on those areas. For myself I have found Mint Linux to be excellent for my eye candy tastes.

As a 10 year Windows user who switched to Linux after Vista came out, I have found the install of Linux awesome. When you are done installing, you have all the software already installed that I would need. Also I love how I can just run Apt and search for a tool I need and it just goes and install it.

There are still some programs (itunes) I miss from Windows, but there are Mac apps I never had either when i was on windows that I wanted.

If anything Ubuntu is the driving force moving users to Linux and companies such as Dell and now Epson selling computers with the OS on them. Vista is a total flop and you have tons of people migrating away from Microsoft to Linux or Mac.

Again, see the above link. The Dell/Ubuntu deal is a sham. It will never sell in any volume whatsoever, and Dell will not transfer any resources away from selling XP/Vista. The sales figures will be very poor, and half the systems will probably be shipped back.

I just did another price comparison on the new Dell Inspiron 1420 notebook offer… You save $15 with Ubuntu over Vista Home!

And Epson selling TurboLinux PCs in Japan ONLY [they have been doing so for at least a year now] doesn’t really matter one bit…

Just about every OEM or player has sold Linux PCs in the past. Nothing came of it.

Vista is a total flop and you have tons of people migrating away from Microsoft to Linux or Mac.

I seriously doubt anyone is migrating away from Windows because of Vista. Or that if so — is anything more than a drop in the bucket. If Vista does not work for someone, going back to XP is the logical choice. Not to Ubuntu, unless they have no reason to use a PC at all but to browse the internet… In which case they probably never even heard of Ubuntu.

All Vista needs is a SP release. Microsoft will figure it out, and fix it.

“Microsoft is bad, but IBM is good because they works with Linux.”
No – IBM is not good, but is much better than Microsoft because they concentrate on what is called “standards”.
They published and/or supported standards for a long time. Just like HP. Or even Apple up to a certain point. Or Novell these days. Or of course Red Hat.

Not Microsoft: they created closed extensions to SMB, and used their monopoly with all – even illegal – ways possible to force others away from other solutions. All of the court fights all over the world give you an overview about what I am talking.

And I don’t care about fan-boys, I care about healthy market structures. Healthy markets are driven by competition and competing forces – but in the OS market there is hardly any real competition because there is one vendor which has a monopoly. That *is* a strong reason to not support Microsoft.

About the attack rate and Google: Google usually gives back modifications they did – the Linux developers they pay contribute to the community. Therefore the modifications Google did to their Linux servers is most likely upstream already, so that argument doesn’t count.
And yes, there is something like “more secure by design” – why do you think MS tried to copy the security principles of Unix systems with Vista lately? No one says it is invulnerable, but the design is much more secure.

And the Apache example: yes, Apache had more reported vulnerabilities, but as you wrote in your posts (as I understand them) the number should be taken careful – however, my point was more the severity of the vulnerabilities: IIS made it into the normal-people evening news with the worms, Apache never.

So I have to track down some Microsoft fonts and a few multimedia codecs. My time would have to be tremendously valuable to outweight the money I save by having a free office suite, operating system, image editor, vector graphics editor, and any other apps I need. Also, I believe you’d be a big fan of Linux Mint. It takes care of these things from an install. Like you said, “no clicks.”

I still don’t understand why u said that Linux must be a copy of Windows. What is the most popular kind of music now? Pop? Rock? Rap? Electro? So why there are still a lot of people who love Mozart? And why Mozart is still respectable? Mozart isn’t mainstream, it is not Pop, it is not Rock but it still exists and will exist. I don’t understand why you want only one OS on this world. This is just plain stupid. One OS, maybe one kind of music too? And one kind of cars? It is called communism, and history shows what communism does to people.

If you don’t know differences between communism and capitalism I see no reason to talk with you about it. This is called ignorance. And don’t be afraid of GNU/Linux, you can always switch to Mono and continue your Microsoft.NET journey.

So you don’t think that Capitalism killed more people than Communism? Dig a little deeper than the surface. It’s all about money, power, and corruption, regardless of whatever system you are in. The current example is the war in Iraq… The place where fortunes are being made by American companies.

While Bush might have no clue, the people around him, the Capitalists/Opportunists, pushed things forward for this to happen from day one. The real reason for the start of the war was that Sadam would not allow American companies to come in and capitalize on Iraq’s resources. He needed to be removed. While it did not work exactly as planned, the outcome has been extremely profitable.

There is nothing that makes more money and profit than war. And war is never fought for anything else once you go passed the lies and illusions.

Go back to the start, thousands of years of history, and count all the blood that has been spilled in favor of Capitalism, or making money.

Capitalism kills the rest of the world, then itself, Communism just kills its own people for the most part.

Dig deeper? Deeper than what? Soviet Union? North Korea? China? Do you really can’t see that communism and capitalism are two different worlds? Sure, our world is not perfect but it will never be perfect, greed will always exist, greed for money, greed for power. It will exist in any system. But in capitalism you can fight for your freedoms and you know that you can win. In communism you can sit silent, die or emigrate . And you should know that communism would not let you write this blog, would not let you to discuss about capitalism. In communism you would lost you job right now and could not get new one.

What kind of argument is that? Could you be more verbose? I don’t watch CNN or Fox News. I lived under Soviet occupation. Communism destroys human soul.

>>Your point being that Capitalism is freedom and Communism is slavery.
>
>My point being that they are not as different as people think. All social systems come from >the same roots, and more or less, are quickly turned into scams.

You represent a point of view of a man who never experienced what communism is. Your imagination tells you that it is just another version of capitalism. You say that all systems are similar, but its not systems, its people who are the same. We can’t change people but we can change the rules and use law if necessary to force those “bad guys” to respect them.

Capitalism (of course when I say capitalism I think democracy because capitalism isn’t social system but economic system although free market imply freedom) with all its pros and cons gives you tools to change your country, to change the law. Communism gives you nothing but dreams and wasted life.

>>I lived under Soviet occupation.
>
>I lived in Moscow from 1978 to 1987. The rest in the USA.

How typical for those times. You left your country, my country won against communism. Most people in your country are incredible poor and just minority are elite (this is quasi-democracy). But i bet you still don’t see differences. Gulags? Who cares?

>>We can’t change people but we can change the rules and use law if necessary to force >>those “bad guys” to respect them.
>
>Laws don’t change “bad guys.”

This is exactly what I said, we can’t change them but good law can help to punish them or prevent from breaking the rules.

>>Communism gives you nothing but dreams and wasted life.
>
>I’m not sure why is it you think I love Communism and hate Capitalism or Democracy. >What I’ve said is they both are shams.

We were talking about freedom and I refereed to communism as a system where you had no choice. But you see no difference between them…Gosh.

And still you did not answer my question. Why Linux must be a copy of Windows? Maybe it is just you who don’t understand what I said here http://www.devside.net/blog/linux-microsoft#comment-1446 that GNU/Linux is not Windows. Some people wish to see it as a free, stable, secure, opensource, version of Windows. But it is not and I hope it will not be like that. Instead of making such statements “Smartest Linux Move Ever? And Why Ubuntu will Fail” maybe you should read this http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm Maybe then you will understand.

You should use Google and type in any name of a large corporation that has been around for a while and “Nazi Germany”.
No, I will not. My problem here is that I tend to use scientific methods rather than conspiracy theories. I check the news and the reports and the lawsuits and compare them, and I don’t listen to people whose reputation is more than questionable. The boring part (compared to conspiracy) here is that you can only claim things when you have facts – and that you also have to admit that there is nothing like “they are all evil and profit driven” but there are different forces in each company driving in different directions with different strengths.
For example there are quite some people at MS working towards open standards. And there are people working at Red Hat who would like to close down one or the other program to make it proprietary.
But in both cases they don’t play a major role compared to the stronger forces and groups in the company.

And no, I will not take on your Google argument because this argument was not about Google but about standards and working towards or away from them. And again you didn’t have an argument at all against the SMB example.

No, I will not. My problem here is that I tend to use scientific methods rather than conspiracy theories.

Perhaps you really should, as what I was referring to has nothing to do with theories or conspiracies… Just well documented history of American companies getting caught trading with the Nazis during WW2. Companies you know right now. And that’s history for you in the form of congressional hearings and court proceedings. A lot of the companies and people involved were found guilty, and received a slap on the wrist.

Let me make it easy for you: search “Trading with the Enemy Act.”

And that’s how Capitalism works, anything for a buck. Whatever that involves, creating conflict, spreading fear, playing both sides, and so on.

For example there are quite some people at MS working towards open standards. And there are people working at Red Hat who would like to close down one or the other program to make it proprietary.

I don’t doubt that.

I’m out of here.

We both know you just came here to make a speech. Not that there is anything wrong with that. I just wish people would slow down, not make grand assumptions, think a little more, and not be so damb critical.

We both know you just came here to make a speech. Not that there is anything wrong with that. I just wish people would slow down, not make grand assumptions, think a little more, and not be so damb critical.
Nope, new to me – I wanted to discuss facts, but unfortunately you tend to ignore most of the reasons I pointed out (like the choice argument or the question for a comparable monopoly like MS has it today).

And about the US-corps-Nazi stuff: did all US corporations deal with Nazis? No!
Of course there is corruption, of course there are bad people. But not all people are like that. There are many companies which have strict (and well working) anti corruption statements. Yes, there are still the other companies (which worked with Saddam in the 90s for example), but packing them all in one corner is just too far away from reality. Because: labeling them all with the same label is easy – and not thinking at all.
And since you were talking about Nazis: even among the Nazis there were good people fighting the regime – even corporations. Schindler comes to mind…

And stop making assumptions about my motivations as long as you have no idea.

The various desktop environments available today have been around for a long time, guys. If you really go back to the beginning of them all, you can see where bits and pieces have been rehashed.. Gnome borrows from Windows.. Windows borrows from Apple.. KDE copies older versions of itself (!?) .. how long are we going to allow natural, intuitive shapes and controls to be passed along as patented innovations? What’s being touted as trendy now (They’re copying so-and-so!) is basically a high definition version of Gnome, a decade ago! WAKE UP, PEOPLE!

All you people saying Linux is pointless are complete and utter morons. Linux is not just a good alternative, it’s a necessary alterantive – even if adoption is low. Would you like to wake up in 20 years time and see the entire world dependant on computing and Microsoft so far ahead of any competition that they have a practical strangle-hold on the entire industry. You f*cktards need to watch some Richard Stallman presentations on Youtube. Granted, he is a freak but he sure as hell speaks the truth.